Pro SQL Server Always On Availability Groups

This book is your field guide to planning, deploying, managing, and troubleshooting Always On Availability Groups. The Always On Availability Groups feature is an enterprise-level solution for high availability and disaster recovery. Always On provides a rich set of options that reduce overhead and resource usage and enable database administrators to implement and manage high availability and disaster recovery solutions far more easily than by implementing the log-shipping and database-mirroring solutions of the past.

Pro SQL Server Always On Availability Groups shows how to reduce downtime, maximize application availability, and provide data protection. The goal is always to have your SQL Server databases up and running whenever you need them, rain or shine, disaster or otherwise. With a focus on real-world experiences and war stories, authors Uttam Parui and Vivek Sanil offer you:

• Tips, tricks, and best practices for architecting and deploying availability groups.
• The confidence required to manage and monitor availability groups.
• Techniques to troubleshoot common issues that you may face during and after deploying availability groups in a mission-critical production environment.

What You Will Learn

• Grasp important concepts underlying high-availability and disaster recovery.
• Plan and deploy Always On Availability Groups in your corporate environment.
• Manage Availability Groups to ensure constant readiness and high throughput.
• Monitor Availability Group performance and troubleshoot problems fast.
• Build on the cloud and make Windows Azure part of your availability solution.
• Employ proven techniques and best practices as tested and shared by the authors.

Audience

Pro SQL Server Always On Availability Groups is aimed at SQL Server architects, database administrators, and IT professionals who are tasked with architecting and deploying a high-availability and disaster recovery solution involving Microsoft SQL Server. This book is also for SQL Server support staff who will be managing and supporting existing availability group deployments.

About the Authors

Uttam Parui is a Senior Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. He has worked at Microsoft for more than 15 years and started working with the SQL Server product since SQL Server 6.5. As a Premier Field Engineer, he delivers SQL Server consulting and support for designated strategic Fortune 500 customers. Also, he has been developing content, speaking at events, as well as authoring books, white papers, and articles related to SQL Server administration, high availability, disaster recovery, and more. Uttam is the coauthor of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Bible (Wiley Publishing) and technical editor for Pro SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering (Apress). He has trained and mentored engineers from Microsoft’s Customer Support Services and Premier Field Engineering teams, and was one of the first to train and assist in the development of Microsoft's SQL Server support teams in Canada and India. He received his master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Vivek Sanil is Senior Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft. Vivek has been working extensively with SQL Server since joining the industry more than 16 years ago. He has been with Microsoft since 2005. He currently works in a support and consulting role in a dedicated capacity with a few large fortune 500 customers. He was in Microsoft Customer Support Services prior to this role. Areas of specialty include database engine internals, AlwaysOn, and performance troubleshooting. He has architected and developed numerous Premier Field Engineering workshops that Microsoft delivers to its customers. He has presented at numerous user group sessions. He has also moderated in several worldwide Microsoft Virtual Academy events.